Thursday, February 23, 2012

Dangers of Bill C30 Misuse by Harper's Conservative Spying

Anyone who reads the national newspapers and writes a blog or posts comments online via twitter or facebook already knows the sockpuppets, strawman sockpuppets and meatpuppets that troll your content.

Harper's bully boys have been called out as shills for overposting on any issue that doesn't back a point of view on the Con party agenda. They work like spammers. Check out the regularity of their posts.

click on posters name to view posting frequency.

Anyone who posts each minute is using the platform as a forum conversation to steer perception towards a view in line with their party affiliation and may be a shill. But to be fair, in the messages to the user section, one can see that a real discussion by readers furthers the conversation.

Users post rebuttals or agreement

There are, however, abusers of the comments section who can trail your i.d. and send messages via your facebook, twitter, blog account. The Globe's policy is not to delete comments because once posted, they become part of the public record. Legally, they are protecting themselves before you. So be careful not to say any slanderous comments.

One type of spam or malware is called clickjacking. The whole interactivity of the net leaves spying, malicious endangerment of your accounts and misuse wide open. If we had a government oversight that worked ethically, there wouldn't be a concern. We'd feel protected. By the Harper government spies, lies, tampers with the poll results, phones voters to lie to them. You know what Rob Ford does to whistleblowers. The list goes on. Now bill C30 will make it even easier to knock us down for good.

If you doubt how nefarious the gatekeeping of information can be, then check out what search giant Google has been up to by crossing the line of fairness. Look up #search neutrality, #google bombing for example. For Immigrants to Canada, google page rank will push results for "for profit" suppliers of fast tracking into tar sands Alberta. For CO2 emissions for Alberta or water use, page rank will push results to Cenovus or Capp. To avoid the industry self promotion paid for information, use Google Scholar.

look at the number of citings for verity of source

You already know how misinformation is destroying public perceptions of climate change, of tar sands, by counter strategies like climate denial and ethical oil propaganda, of NDP or Liberal policies by slander. See astroturfing. So in the general sense, we will lose the capability to get truth from the internet through all the noise of misinformation. Thank goodness for the CBC for its wonderful reporting, Al Jazeera for a non western point of view, and UK Guardian for its science and environmental reporting.

For an example of lack of information on the environment, look at the UN site which would always post information about World Watch Institute. Underfunding results in statistics not being made available.

If it wasn't for Twitter, I would never have discovered this article by Senator Tom Banks. You must read it.

The interactivity of the internet also forces us to have to reveal issues we believe in that will be used against us by a corrupt government. That's why bill C30 is a danger.